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Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Just Another Day in the Office

I was in Cincinnati this week, the home of the world headquarters of Procter & Gamble. I had full days of meetings, including prepping and working 1:1 with some of my counterparts. As it approached noon on Monday, I got a call from a coworker who had just left me:

"Amanda, I just saw Steve Young walking past the Central Building toward the Towers!"

Whaaaaaat?!!!!

Now, it wasn't totally out of the blue - Monday Night Football was in town for the Bengals/Steelers game, and I had already considered and dismissed walking the four or five blocks from the office to the stadium just to try and see the MNF bus and maybe even catch a glimpse of Jon Gruden, one of my favorite analysts. But the day had gotten crazy busy, crazy fast, so I just had my head down trying to get things done.

I figured this was as good a time as any for a break, though, so I grabbed my phone and hurried downstairs to try and get a glimpse of the Hall of Fame quarterback. I made my way from the Central building to the Tower Lobby, to find a party going on:

P&G has a major sponsorship deal with the NFL - you may have seen some of the amazing Tide ads - and Cover Girl's #nailgating and #fanicure tie ins are genius. (No, I didn't get Bengal stripes on my fingernails... but I AM going online to find the Cowboys set!!) I figured I must've missed Steve, and seeing a friend, figured I'd chat for a few minutes and then go put my head down again.

Until THIS guy walked by!!

Me & Trent in the Tower Lobby
He said he rarely gets people that excited to see him...

Turns out there was an ESPN panel starting in fifteen minutes, and I had perfectly positioned myself to be there with the marketing group. Score!!!

I snagged a seat in the front row right where they walked on stage and managed a fun candid of Rick Reilly, sportswriter extraordinaire.

He even commented on my Cowboys phone case. I think that officially puts me at one degree of separation from every single ESPN analyst. I mean, I'm practically Herbstreit's buddy already.

So I spent the next hour listening to Rick Reilly, Steve Young, Trent Dilfer, and Ickey Woods talk football.

I even got to ask a question during the Q&A (which should be a huge not-surprise to anyone who knows me). When Icky got a question about how he came up with his famous shuffle, I should've been ready - but I did at least catch the last bit of the Ickey Shuffle redux:

All in all, the highlight of my business trip this week. What's crazy is when you work for a massive, world-class company like P&G, this really is just another day at the office.